


Jeanie Bueller's Day Off

by rosefox



Category: Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Genre: Bickering, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, Post-Canon, Siblings, Twins, Yuletide, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-09 12:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12887568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosefox/pseuds/rosefox
Summary: She’s thinking about Ferris. She doesn’t want to be thinking about Ferris. But he emailed her a week ago about coming to their 25th high school reunion, and she’s spent that entire week trying to figure out how to tell him to print the email, fold it, and stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine.





	Jeanie Bueller's Day Off

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LovelyPoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyPoet/gifts).



It's March and Jeanie is freezing her ass off, which seems entirely unfair. She moved to San Francisco to get away from Chicago's shitty weather. But the Sunset District is such a lie. Her mother worked in real estate for forty years, so Jeanie really should have known you can never trust a neighborhood name, but she traded the Chicago L for the L Taraval, and now she's waiting, shivering, drowning in fog, for the next dinky little two-car tram to come along.

She's thinking about Ferris. She doesn't want to be thinking about Ferris. But he emailed her a week ago about coming to their 25th high school reunion, and she's spent that entire week trying to figure out how to tell him to print the email, fold it, and stuff it where the sun doesn't shine. She could just say that, of course, but saying "no" to Ferris never works. He always finds some way to talk people around—even Jeanie, who's been hip to his bullshit ever since he kicked her in the face while they were still in the womb. (There's no hard evidence that he did this, obviously, but Ferris never leaves evidence, and Jeanie has absolutely no doubt that if kicking her in the face would have gotten unborn Ferris something he wanted, he'd have done it. With a smile.)

She just knows that if she leaves the email any longer he's going to call her. She'd better write back before that happens. Phone calls with Ferris make her feel like she's chewing tin foil while endless kazoos play "Take On Me."

Miranda keeps reminding her that no one—not even honey-tongued Ferris—can make her buy a plane ticket or go to the reunion, but it hasn't really sunk in yet. Everything Miranda tells her takes a while to sink in, because it turns out that the emotional centers of Jeanie's brain are wrapped in layers and layers of suburban Illinois lawn turf. Miranda says she grew up in "emotional poverty." Jeanie's pretty sure that's San Francisco hippie earth mother–speak for "Your brother steals all the oxygen in the room and your parents let him get away with it."

There's a thing someone posted on Facebook about living in California but leaving before it makes you soft, and Miranda is probably the kind of soft they meant. She wears hemp dresses. She freezes her vegetable scraps to take to a friend who composts. She's even a therapist. She's amazing, and Jeanie is totally in love with her. Even if Miranda's only sticking around because she likes poking around in Jeanie's messed-up psyche, Jeanie's honestly fine with that. Thoughts of Miranda fill her up and make her warm, even in the fog. If that means California's making Jeanie soft too, well then, call her the Snuggle Bear and drop her on a pile of towels.

Nothing can ever go Jeanie's way for long, so of course her pleasant reverie is interrupted by her phone buzzing and Denis Leary singing "I'm an asshole, an asshole" out of the little speaker. And of course she answers it, fumbling with gloves and touchscreen, because she always does. 

"Hi, what is it?" she snaps, immediately aware that this is a weak opening that Ferris will exploit without even trying. She needs to make a list of better lines to have ready when he calls. Maybe she'll write it down on a card and keep it in her wallet.

Ferris has apparently been keeping his own list since they were teenagers, because the cool voice in her ear says "Hey, Shawna."

"Jesus Christ, Ferris. Would it kill you to not do the worst possible thing? Just once?"

She can just see his smug face pretending to solemnly ponder the question. "It might," he says finally. "And I... I can't take that chance. I'm too young to die."

She very nearly hangs up. She very nearly crosses the street to take the L in the other direction, all the way to the beach, and throw her phone into the Pacific. "What do you _want_?"

"Only to hear the sweet voice of my beloved sister."

"I can't believe you kiss our mother with that lying mouth."

"And to remind you that our twenty-fifth high school reunion is coming up on June eleventh. Does it make you feel old? It doesn't make me feel old but I understand women feel a little differently about these things."

She laughs. Ferris's ideas about women are miles from anything in her reality. "Swing and a miss, little brother. I'm loving every minute of being in my forties."

"I flubbed a joke," he says sadly. "Ten points from Slytherin."

At least he admits he's a Slytherin. 

"I'm not coming home for the reunion," she says all in a rush before she loses her nerve. She shifts the phone to her right ear so she can cram her frozen left hand in her pocket. The wind cuts across the mic and she has to shift it back.

"Are you in a tornado? I thought California only had earthquakes." 

His deadpan is so good. It is the deadest deadpan of all time. Jeanie could never keep her cool the way he does, and she's long since stopped trying. "I'm in a fucking balmy fucking San Francisco fucking spring day."

"Didn't you move there for the weather?" That deadpan's obituary is going to run in tomorrow's _Sun-Times_.

"Thoughts of your slow, painful death are keeping me warm," she says, wishing it were true. She can see the L down the street but it's taking its own sweet time.

"You know what's even warmer?" Ferris says. "Shermer in June."

The L finally deigns to arrive and she hurries on board. It's empty, because no one other than her is foolish enough to live all the way out here, so at least she won't bother anyone with her phone conversation. "Okay," she says as her fingers and ears begin to thaw, "spill. What are you planning, and what makes you think I would ever, ever be a part of it?"

"I don't _plan_ things," he says, sounding a little hurt. "I just take advantage of circumstances that happen to be in my favor. Anyway, that has nothing to do with this."

She frowns at the phone as though he can see her. "I'm so confused."

He hesitates, then sighs. "Cam and Sloane can't make it. They're going to be filming on location in Bangalore and there's just no way they can take time out of the shooting schedule."

"Oh." Jeanie wrinkles her nose. "So you've been jilted by your spouses and now you want me to be your date to the prom? That's depressing. I can't tell which of us should be more insulted."

"Me, probably," he says.

"Hm. No, I think it's me. I _have_ a date to the prom, and she's cuter than you. If I want to go. Which I don't."

"Come on, Jeanie—"

Oh God, he's actually begging, this is so pathetic. "Ferris. Listen to yourself. You don't actually want me there, and you don't actually want to go. I saw the photos from the twentieth reunion all over Facebook and it was just a bunch of drunk assholes toasting the memory of Edgar Q. Jack-Off Rooney. This year won't be any better." 

"Okay, but—"

She leans back in her seat, starting to feel like she might actually get her way for once. It's a rush. Her heart is pounding, but she keeps her voice lazily casual. "If you're going to take that week off anyway, why don't you just go to Bangalore? Crash the set, hang out with actual adults, eat something exciting. Did you know that outside of the Midwest, people make food that has flavors in it?" Miranda's been taking Jeanie to every good restaurant in San Francisco and slowly building up her spice tolerance. A year ago she didn't know Vietnam from Eritrea, but she's learning very fast.

"I told a couple of people I was going," he mutters. 

Weak, so weak. She's got him now. "So let them miss you and wonder what wild things you're up to. Who cares? The world is bigger than Shermer. And you're not in high school anymore. You haven't needed to impress these dinkwads for twenty-five years." There's a pause. She lets it stretch out a bit. Then she goes for the kill. "You don't miss _me_ , Ferris, and you sure as hell don't miss the people we went to school with. You're just lonely with your partners out of town, and you have no idea how to deal. Go be with them. Thank me later."

"Yeah," he says finally. "Okay. That... is a good idea."

"The only kind I have." She glances out the window; they're pulling in to West Portal, where the train goes underground. "I'm about to lose signal. I'll catch you later. Send me a postcard from Bangalore."

She hangs up and puts her phone in her pocket, smiling. Then she fishes it out again and texts Miranda.

_\- You're going to be so proud of me. I just told Ferris to go fuck himself, and made him like it._

_\- SO PROUD. got a client about to come in but tell me all tonight_

_\- Will do. <3 <3_

There are many reasons to be glad she's dating a therapist, but she'd be lying if she didn't admit that one of them was being able to figure out Ferris better than he can figure out himself. As long as he thinks feelings are mushy and boring, she'll have a secret weapon. After all these years of gaslighting, turning the tables with blunt honesty is oh so sweet.

Besides, he really will be happier if he just goes to Bangalore instead of moping around Shermer High like he's still king of the halls. Jeanie wouldn't mind pushing him into the pit he'd dug if that were the only way to get him to leave her alone, but it's nice when both their interests are served by him being on the other side of the planet.

The tunnel swallows the train. As the L rattles into the darkness, Jeanie flips through her pocket calendar to June 11 and circles it, a reminder to herself to find something especially fun to do in honor of having said no to Ferris. Maybe she and Miranda will take a long drive down the coast, or wander around a museum, or go to a baseball game, or have a fancy dinner. Or all of the above, why not? They can take the whole day off.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my betas, C and the RCK!


End file.
